By The Reverend Professor Andrew Linzey, Director of Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics

“Zoophile” is a word meaning “animal lover” or, more generally, those who care for animals. It is used, for example, in Stephen Clark’s works as an alternative, better-sounding term for “animal lover,” “animal protectionist,” or “animal rightist.” Indeed, earlier last century one major anti-vivisection journal was titled The Zoophilist.

I now find that zoophilia has another meaning: sexual relations with animals. Indeed, I appeared in an hour-long television documentary entitled Hidden Love on the United Kingdom’s Channel Four in 2000, which was devoted to exploring the nature and morality of zoophilia.

The programme, incidentally, was strongly slanted in favour. The documentary described in detail and with great sympathy the lives of three individuals who apparently could not live without fulfilling their sexual desires towards animals. Zoophiles were portrayed as a misunderstood and persecuted sexual minority who genuinely love animals.

The taboo concerning zoophily, or bestiality, as it is also still called, is one of the strongest in Western society. The “yuck” factor is immense and many people feel disturbed by the mere thought of it. But I do not think that emotional reaction is, by itself, sufficient grounds for condemning anything. Emotions are wayward things and can never be infallible guides to what is right or wrong.

Neither do I think that it is satisfactory to say that these things are wrong simply because they are “unnatural.” “Naturalness,” like emotion, is a most slippery ethical criterion. What is natural to one person is most unnatural to another. And what, I wonder, is left of “natural life” in a world of organ transplants, open-heart surgery, or even blood transfusions?

For me, one key ethical consideration is consent. In my book, all sexual relations without consent are beyond the pale. Unsurprisingly perhaps, the zoophiles interviewed on the programme argued that the animals concerned did consent, and even enjoyed such contact. I am deeply skeptical about such claims, and I think they border on sheer self-deception.

In the case of domestic animals, they are subject to human control and domination; they are absolutely or near-absolutely dependent upon us. What meaning can “consent” have in such a context?

The only analogy I can think of, fiercely resisted though it is by zoophiles, is sexual relations with children. Paedophiles have also made claims about children consenting, enjoying, or even initiating sexual relations. But it only takes a moment’s reflection to see that children, like animals, cannot give full and informed consent. All sexual contact without consent is inherently coercive.

I recall writing as early as 1976 on the morality of companion animals, saying that:

We need to distinguish between a kind of love which respects animals for what they are and allows them to pursue their own lives according to their natural instincts, and another selfish kind of love which seeks to condition animal lives in accordance with our own desires.

For myself, I don’t want to become a persecutor of any sexual minority. I am only too well aware of how Christianity has a terrible record in that regard. Where, I wonder, were the Christian protests against the hundreds of thousands of gays who were sent to Nazi concentration camps? Moreover, zoophiles are right to point out our inconsistency: currently, one act of bestiality carries a penalty of life-long imprisonment in the United Kingdom, while torture of animals (in some cases at least) is legal.

But however disproportionate the sentence, I judge it essential that zoophilic acts remain illegal. Currently, twenty-eight American states have specifically outlawed the practice. I view with apprehension a new “rights for zoophiles” movement that might emerge, of which the British television programme might be just the precursor.

Zoophilia is not the worst thing we do to animals, but a world that made it legal would be adding yet another form of exploitation to all the rest. The function of law (and in my view its best, and perhaps only, moral justification) is to protect the weak, the vulnerable, and the innocent. Although libertarians would say that the law is best kept out of the sphere of sexual relations (and in general I would agree), the truth must be faced that without law animals would — in this regard — be left utterly defenceless.

---

Revised version of an article which first appeared in The Animals’ Agenda, May/June 2000.